Barclays "may be outbid after 15 years as main sponsor" of football’s most-popular domestic competition after England’s Premier League "started discussions with other potential backers," according to Tariq Panja of BLOOMBERG.
The London-based bank has sponsored football's richest competition since '01. The current £120M ($189M) three-year contract "ends after next season and is the first that doesn’t give the bank an exclusive period to renew."
Barclays said that it "will negotiate again." A person familiar with the talks said that "products and services companies with operations in Africa and Asia," where the league is popular, "have expressed interest." U.S. companies "have also contacted the league amid a spike in interest there since NBC Sports started screening games last season." League spokesperson Nick Noble declined to comment.
Former Barcelona CMO Esteve Calzada said that getting more than £120M "will be determined by how much exclusivity the Premier League’s 20 clubs are willing to give the title sponsor." Under the current agreement, teams "are not allowed to sell sponsorship rights to banks unless they are signed to be the principal partner, like Standard Chartered is with Liverpool." Calzada: "The big difference versus what Barclays has had so far is I think it’s virtually impossible -- no matter which brand comes along -- to have category exclusivity in English football like Barclays used to have." BrandRapport Managing Dir Nigel Currie said that he expects the league’s next main sponsor to pay more than £60M ($94.5M) a season. Currie: "People think it’s an expensive sponsorship but I don’t think it is, certainly not at 40 million, because for the right global brand it gets to a huge number of places and it’s still clearly ahead of the other leagues in Europe at the moment" (BLOOMBERG, 12/1).
